Weekly Quercus Updates
This week: Canvas Deploy Notes, This Week's Faculty Question: I'd like my students to submit a short video as an assignment? What are the best tools for them to record and share their video?
In this Weekly Update:
Canvas Deploy Notes
Canvas deploys are bi-weekly small changes to Canvas code intended to fix known issues and improve performance of existing features. The following notes are from the Canvas deploy from March 03, 2021.
Announcements Link Visibility in Course Navigation
Adding an initial announcement to a course does not affect the visibility of the Announcements link. Previously, when an announcement was created in a course, the Announcements link intermittently remained hidden from students until the course was updated by first disabling and then re-enabling the Announcements tab from Course Settings>Navigation. Canvas code has been updated so that an initial announcement in a course does not affect visibility of the Announcements link.
Classic Quizzes: Decimal Places and Rounding in Mathematical Formula and Numerical Questions
Mathematical formulas are now rounded correctly in Classic Quizzes. Previously when a mathematical formula question was created in a Classic quiz, some formulas were not rounding correctly and were being treated as if they had trailing numbers even though they did not. Canvas code has been updated to round decimal places correctly.
Similarly, student responses to numerical questions are now rounded correctly. Previously, when a numerical question with precision answers was added to a quiz, and the precision answer had at least two numbers to the left of the decimal and one to the right, the student’s answers automatically added trailing numbers. This created additional decimal places and rounded incorrectly. Canvas code has been updated to remove these unwanted auto-generated decimal places.
This Week's Faculty Question
Q: I'd like my students to submit a short video as an assignment? What are the best tools for them to record and share their video?
A: One option for recording their video is for students to use TechSmith Snagit (free for students, staff, and faculty at U of T). Snagit is a basic screen capture program that allows users to record a webcam with audio. It also includes some basic trimming functions. Snagit creates a local recording on the students’ computer. Here's a basic "Record a Video" guide using Snagit that you can share with your students.
To share the recording to an assignment, it’s best if students first upload the recording to a streaming server (the U of T Libraries’ MyMedia service, for example, is available to students) or a file sharing service (i.e., OneDrive) and share the link or URL with you. It’s not recommended that students upload the entire recording to the assignment because Quercus does not support very large video files - the maximum file size for media files in Quercus is of 500 MB.
Note: For students to be able to share their video link with you, you can select the following submission options for the assignment:
- text entry: will allow students to share the video link inside a text box
- website URL: will allow the students to share the URL for their video
If you need assistance setting up a video assessment (or any other type of assessment), please email the EdTech Office or book an Assessment Review consultation with one of our Instructional Technologists.
Have a Quercus (or EdTech) question? Please contact FASE's EdTech Office.
